


i’m settin' off (but not without my muse)

by ivyrobinson



Category: Anastasia (1997), Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:12:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26310160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyrobinson/pseuds/ivyrobinson
Summary: during a tumultuous time in her life, anya escapes to the lakes with dmitry“If you could be anything,” she asks him, and he turns his head slightly to show that he’s listening. “What would you be?”“The love of your life,” he responds.
Relationships: Dimitri | Dmitry & Anya | Anastasia Romanov (Anastasia 1997 & Broadway), Dimitri | Dmitry/Anya | Anastasia Romanov (Anastasia 1997 & Broadway)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 32





	i’m settin' off (but not without my muse)

Dmitry’s family owned a cabin out by the lake that he takes her to a week after the scandal breaks. It’s a relentless week of photographers in her face and a never ending stream of calls from reporters and old “friends” she hadn’t heard from in years. 

It’s quiet and calm at the lakes. She locks her phone in the glove box of Dmitry’s truck and had given her sister, Maria, the landline at the cabin in case of an emergency. 

She wears her boyfriend’s shirts as an entire outfit, foregoing shoes as she walks across wet grass every morning. Dmitry’s parked his truck somewhere out of view so even if someone thought to look for them there they wouldn’t be able to. 

Anya lays in the grass and picks dandelions. Dmitry’s old friend Vlad goes grocery shopping for them every other week, meeting Dmitry somewhere halfway. 

He’s getting concerned about her, two months in, but he hasn’t broached it yet.

Anya is a master of deflection and distraction, a trick that has served her family well until recently. 

“What if I became a poet?” Anya asks him as he steps next to where she lays in the grass. 

“You could become anything you want,” Dmitry responds, dropping to the ground and laying beside her. Their hands press together intertwined with flower stems and blades of grass. “Even weeds.” 

She’s actually a painter, she’s painted every day these past two months. As though she had to just to prove the reason to stay was because she was so productive. 

She likes to paint portraits of Dmitry featuring every expression of love he’s ever taught her. 

“I’d like to be a dandelion,” she announces and he rolls onto his side, his hand flat on her stomach and she pushes it lower. 

He kisses her neck, “You’d make the most beautiful dandelion, Anastasia.” 

She wrinkles her nose at the reminder of who she is back in the outside world. Her parents fall from grace and arrest. The world reveling in the drama of it all. 

She’s a person, they’re a family, not entertainment. 

“Not Anastasia here,” she reminds him, and then brings her mouth to his before he can correct himself. 

He drags his mouth down her body and she becomes a little more a part of the ground beneath her. 

-

She likes to swim amongst the light of the moon and stars. There’s something calming about it. Dmitry is a good swimmer, better than her- he was on the swim team back in high school, he’s mentioned in passing. Sometimes she just wraps herself around his body and lets him take her out deeper into the lake. 

Tonight they’re in more shallow water, but she’s still wrapped around him, her chin resting on his shoulder as he treads water. 

“If you could be anything,” she asks him, and he turns his head slightly to show that he’s listening. “What would you be?”

“The love of your life,” he responds, squeezing lightly where his hands hold her legs. 

Anya kisses him on the cheek. “You’re already that. What else?” 

“Don’t need anything else,” he tells her and she thinks it’s a lie.

She thinks the answer is to be anonymous, which isn’t something he can ever be with her. Especially not now. 

“You should aim for more,” she tells him. 

Dmitry laughs, “Think I’ve already overshot.” 

Then he spins her around in the water as she shrieks with laughter and learns how to be happy again. 

-

Anya has ruined every shirt with paint Dmitry had hastily packed to bring with him when they needed to get out of town. When he found her curled up in a ball in her bathroom, the screen protector on her phone smashed from where she'd thrown it, after he had to get past a dozen or so people waiting to get a shot of her leaving her apartment. 

She’s never asked how he facilitated such a clean getaway from them both and doesn’t want to know the details. 

Dmitry just does whatever she needs without asking or explanation and she doesn’t know how to not take advantage of that right now. 

He wraps an arm around her waist, dropping a kiss against her shoulder as she works. She used to hate these interruptions back in the city but now she craves every touch and reminder that people love her despite her family and upbringing. 

“What’s this?” 

He always asks her about her work, even though he never answers questions about his own. It’s a taboo subject these days anyway. 

“Love Amongst the Weeds,” she answers, tapping the green on the paintbrush against the type of his nose. “Do you wish for us to go back?” 

Dmitry shrugs, pulling her back against him, making her lose her concentration. “Nothing to go back to.” 

“Did you get fired because of me?” 

He shakes his head, resting his chin against her shoulder. “Quit. It didn’t feel right anymore.” 

“You’re not one of them,” Anya points out. 

“There’s very little difference these days between journalist and vulture,” he counters. “I’ll find something else. I’m very talented.” 

She thinks of her Aunt Xenia and her claims Dmitry only dates her for information to sell a book later on and pushes them away. Her Aunt is an old and bitter woman for a reason. 

She rolls her eyes, “Maybe you’re the one that should become the poet.” 

“Can’t,” he responds, releasing her. “I can only handle you being in love with me right now.” 

Anya just flicks paint at him in response. 

-

“What do you think you’ll do when we go back?” Anya asks, curling up against Dmitry’s back, her arm looped around his chest. 

“Do you want to go back?” He asks her. 

“Can’t live in a cabin by the lake forever,” she responds. “Or so you keep telling me.” 

“Don’t have to go back to New York either,” he tells her. “We can go anywhere we want.” 

Just not home, it seems. 

“I want to be with my family and want to be left alone,” she says, knowing it’ll be impossible for months, if not years. 

There’s still the trial to go through and it takes all of her to not shudder from the thought. 

She loves her parents but hates them at the same time. 

“Your grandmother did offer that you could stay with her,” Dmitry reminds her. 

Staying with her grandmother at her estate just outside of Paris feels as much like running away as what she currently is doing does. 

“I don’t want this to define my life,” Anya says, knowing she’s coming close to whining. 

She wants everything. She’s always been very bad at compromising. 

“It won’t,” Dmitry promises, turning to pull her against him. “Not forever.”

Everything sounds possible when he says it. 

-

It is proof that she had been doing the right thing when the landline rings for the first time in three months on the same day she puts pants on for the first time in those three months. 

It was just an experiment she wishes she hadn’t indulged in. 

It startles her and Dmitry as they eat lunch, the two of them stare at the phone for three rings before Dmitry comes to life, walking over and answering it. 

Anya prays for a wrong number but no one is listening to her when Dmitry says, “Hey Masha, she’s right here.” 

She can feel the city creep back up on her as she takes the receiver from him, bringing it to her ear. 

“Hey, It’s me,” she greets her sister. She imagines her phone, the battery most likely dead from the months she hasn’t touched it, filled with missed calls, a full voicemail and text messages she won’t ever have enough time to catch up on. 

“Hey Nastya,” her sister says, sounding tired. She refused to leave the city, wanting to keep up with their parents' lawyers and the news. “It’s time to come home.”


End file.
